Agriculture & Food
We eat to live. Humans use approximately 11% of Earth’s land for the cultivation of crops for food, but also for clothing, medicine and biofuels. Globally, major crops include sugarcane, pumpkin, maize (corn), wheat, rice, cassava, soybeans, hay, potatoes and cotton.
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Reconstructing facts in Bt cotton: Why skepticism fails
The case that the “triumph narrative” of Bt cotton in India comes mainly from economists, the biotech industry and their academic ...
Petition to condemn Golden Rice vandalism gains support from scientific community
An online petition to condemn the activists who destroyed a Golden Rice field trial has gained 1500 signatures in just ...
Plant geneticist Kevin Folta explains GMO process in foods
When humans began to farm between ten and twenty thousand years ago, they took the seeds from their best edible ...
Visit to vandalized Golden Rice field trial
On August 9 and 10, we traveled overland 320 kilometers to the Bicol region in Southern Luzon in the Philippines ...
African countries slowly warming up to the idea of GM crops
While South Africa has long grown genetically modified (GM) crops, resistance from across most of the continent is set to ...
Agriculture expert to become first scientist CEO of Monstanto India
A 24-year agriculture veteran, Dr Gyanendra Shukla, Ph.D. (Agriculture Botany) and MBA, recently took over as Regional Lead and CEO, ...
‘Golden Rice’ research continues despite militants’ attack
MANILA - Research work on an experimental rice variety will continue despite an attack by militants who destroyed a test ...
Oregon wheat contamination still a mystery
On Monday, investigators working with the US Department of Agriculture's plant inspection agency APHIS released the first progress update in ...
Argentine scientists develop virus resistant GM potato
Argentine scientists have developed potato plants resistant to Potato Virus Y (PVY), a disease that reduces crop yields from 20 ...
Lab-grown burgers cannot provide a secure future for Africa
Sergey Brin, the billionaire American businessman who co-founded Google, pays a Dutch scientist to develop a burger from stem cells ...
Golden Rice trial vandalized
According to the Business Mirror, a farmer group called Kilusang Magbubukid ng Bikol (Peasant Movement of Bicol, or KMB) and ...
Mark Lynas: It’s time to ignore anti-GMO activists
Fifteen years ago I was an anti-GMO activist, determined to ensure that biotechnology was never adopted. I destroyed crops in ...
Kloor: Critic of pseudoscience = defender of industry?
If you follow the public debate on genetically modified foods, you know it’s become unhinged from reality. This is because ...
Hawaii: Big Island council withdraws GE bill after discussion
No decision on the GMO prohibition bill at the Hawaii County Council’s Committee on Public Safety and Mass Transit. Bill ...
Overcoming the “ick” factor key to understanding GMOs
One of the greatest obstacles to technological progress, especially but not only in areas such as food and medicine, has ...
UK debate: Is opposition to GM food really just superstition?
Green party leader Natalie Bennett and Johnjoe McFadden, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey, debate the ...
Canada: 14-year-old debates GE with TV personality
Rachel Parent is 14 and believes GE food should be labeled. The young activist has been making public speeches about ...
Ghana: GE promoters winning as major opponent switches to pro-GE camp
It could be described as a battle to control food security. It could even be seen as a game in ...
Natural products producers: Let the consumer market decide on GE labeling
It’s the most contentious issue for industry since the passage of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 or the ...
Kauai Council delays decision on modified crops
The Kauai County Council will wait for legal opinions before deciding whether to approve a measure that would require agricultural ...
Philippines: Golden rice rice approval ‘edging closer’
Scientists in the Philippines are weeks from submitting a genetically modified variety of rice to the authorities for biosafety evaluations ...
Bruce Chassy: None of the animals and plants we eat today exist ‘in nature,’ they are all GMOs
What precedent might it set if firms are forced to label foods made using new technologies, even if the end ...
Hawaii’s paradise is being threatened by fear-mongering, threats, and witch-hunting
Is Hawaii, Paradise being Poisoned? AbsoFreakinlutely by fear, threats, fear mongering a witch hunt conducted by those who don’t trust ...
Keith Kloor: The GE labeling debate
There are two camps that favor labeling genetically modified [GM] foods: 1) The “Right to Know” people, who say they ...
Philpott faux pas: Shills, semantics, and a defense of the science writing community
Stop using “industry defenders” and other dismissive catch-alls to frame genetic modification as us-versus-them ...
Agricultural scientist Steve Savage reflects on the anti-GMO bill in Hawaii
Steve Savage went to Hawaii to try to combat the anti-GMO hysteria surrounding Bill 2491. Farmers who work on the ...
Grist: Who’s doing the research on GMO seeds?
Johnson begins a multi-step investigation into intellectual property rights. Do big biotech corporations really exercise draconian control on all biotech ...
